![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/chris_church_game_dirt.jpg\")
Chris Church is that rare musical auteur who succeeds at most everything to which he applies his talents. And his body of work resolutely resists pigeonholing; he\u2019s done everything from metal to prog to powerpop to .. well, you get the idea. And carrying forth the proud tradition forged by Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Emitt Rhodes, Todd Rundgren and select others, on Game Dirt<\/i> Church works alone.<\/p>\n
The bouncy pop of \u201cLearn\u201d had its roots planted firmly in a universally-known tune by another composer, but don\u2019t let that attract from its irresistible charm. Elsewhere \u2013 and perhaps riffing on the album\u2019s baseball theme \u2013 he changes batters mid-inning: \u201cFalderal\u201d kicks off as a singer-songwriter style tune before heading off in a wholly different direction. It\u2019s a jarring shift, yet it works.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a close-in, intimate vibe to the songs; \u201cFall\u201d is a prime example. You\u2019ll feel as if you\u2019re in Church\u2019s bedroom studio with him as the recorded captures the performance. But hey, over there in the corner is a massed Church chorus, as tight as any backing vocals on a Steely Dan LP. That deft balance between intimate\/informal and clear-coat polish is a key characteristic of Game Dirt<\/i>. So, too, is the tasty yet tantalizingly brief lead guitar break on \u201cFall.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLost\u201d has a ragged, Neil Young vibe. The chiming \u201cTrying\u201d applies hooks to a melancholy tune, one that lands midway between Matthew Sweet and Gin Blossoms; not a bad place to come down. \u201cHang\u201d is a spiky riff-rocker that vaguely recalls Led Zeppelin, albeit with welcome down-to-earth vocals. \u201cKnow\u201d rocks out mandolin-style. The good-timung \u201cSmile,\u201d too, mines a country rock vein. \u201cRemoved\u201d makes a convincing case that there\u2019s plenty of life left in the oft-maligned classic rock format; it\u2019s not a stretch to imagine Velvet Crush playing the track. Stick around to the very end and you’ll be rewarded with “Sunrise,” quite possibly the best cut on a lineup that’s all hits, no errors.<\/p>\n
You may have noticed that all of the album\u2019s 13 tracks feature one-word titles, a tic that also characterized one of Todd Rundgren\u2019s one-man excursions, Arena<\/i>. But where that album had a slight whiff of let\u2019s get-this-done-ness, Game Dirt<\/i> sounds like the product of careful, meticulous planning, preparation ,execution and delivery. One might even say (though I<\/em> won’t, because I avoid clich\u00e9s like the plague) that Chris Church has hit a home run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chris Church is that rare musical auteur who succeeds at most everything to which he applies his talents. And his body of work resolutely resists pigeonholing; he\u2019s done everything from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[4357],"class_list":["post-21009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-chris-church","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21009"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21013,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21009\/revisions\/21013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}